Category: conference

All speakers on OHS conference video should have been identified

The Safety Institute of Australia (SIA) has released a post Safety In Action conference video of vox-pops.  It’s mentioned in this blog as the editor, Kevin Jones, is included for several comments towards the end.

The intention of the video is to promote the next conference by reflecting on the previous.  This is a useful marketing tool that is not hard to create and, at face value, is informative, as far as it goes.

A major inconsistency or omission is that only a couple of speakers are identified.  This should not usually be an issue but several of the speakers should have been identified as committee members of the Safety Institute, these include:

  • The Vice President of the ACT Committee of Management
  • A committee member from Victoria
  • the current President of INSHPO and a former SIA National President.

There is no reason for some speakers to be identified and others not.  Identification of all speakers allows the viewer to filter between delegates who attend for professional development and those delegates who have a vested interest in promoting the conference.

The conference, as a whole, was better than expected and the vox-pops reflect that but the promotional video would have gained more authority by having all the speakers identified.

Kevin Jones

Dis-harmonisation over OHS laws

Victoria’s largest OHS conference and trade show has ended.   The shadow of the impending harmonisation of OHS laws hung over both events.  The OHS message throughout the conference was one of nothing to worry about. WorkSafe’s Ian Forsythe felt that Victoria was well-placed for minimal disruption as the OHS laws in that State had been thoroughly reviewed by Chris Maxwell QC in 2003.  Forsythe described the current OHS review as “Maxwell on steroids”, a good line for the conference audience but one that reflects the, often, smug approach of many Victorians to the harmonisation process, an approach not shared elsewhere as shown by a front-page article in The Australian on 9 April 2011.

The Business Council of Australia is concerned about the different interpretations of the laws by each of the states.  This has been a possibility from the very start of the reform process because the focus was always harmonisation, not uniformity. Continue reading “Dis-harmonisation over OHS laws”

Beware OHS statistics quoted in media releases

On 6 April 2011, at the Safety In Action conference in Melbourne, the Safety Institute of Australia and the Australian Institute of Management released the findings of their 2011 Business Survey.  The 2010 survey was discussed in an earlier blog article.

SafetyAtWorkBlog was allowed to see a version of the survey results prior to their public release next week but according to the media release of 6 April:

“More than 40 per cent (41%) of the occupational health and safety (OHS) personnel surveyed did not believe their organisation had a ‘well entrenched OHS culture.’ That view was shared by a quarter of human resources (HR) personnel and senior managers involved in the survey. In contrast, just 11 per cent of CEOs and Board members held that view.

Furthermore, almost half of OHS personnel (49%) who participated in the survey believed that efforts to minimise Continue reading “Beware OHS statistics quoted in media releases”

Australia’s Safety Week

The last week of October each year is Safety Week in Australia.  It exists under different names in each State but everyone coordinates events for the same time each year.  Below are some  links for further information, some are more developed than others.

In 2009, I was a Safety Ambassador for Safe Work Australia and found that if one was prepared to give, the rewards were ten-fold.

If you are in Australia I strongly recommend attending one of the many free OHS information events.  If you are outside Australia, regularly check the Australia OHS regulator websites for some innovative approaches to safety and its promotion.

Queensland

Australia

Victoria

Tasmania

Australian Capital Territory (yes, the ACT has a month of activities)

Western Australia

South Australia

Kevin Jones

ICAP Congress of Applied Psychology is a neglected OHS resource

In July 2010, Melbourne Australia is hosting the 2010 conference of the International Congress of Applied Psychology.  What was an OHS consultant at this conference?  The question should be why wasn’t OHS consultants at this conference?

This conference is not about workplace safety, per se.  It is about how people think and communicate.  It provides research (some would say evidence), often about how people relate to each other at work.  The exciting content of this ICAP Conference makes the Safety In Action Conference look like a history lesson.

The conference has made the full program and the speaker abstracts online, for free.  Both are big PDF files but are excellent resources for those OHS professionals looking for the latest research into bullying, driver safety, health & wellbeing, organisational behaviour, leadership, fatigue, stress and other issues. Continue reading “ICAP Congress of Applied Psychology is a neglected OHS resource”

Prominent OHS regulator addresses ASSE conference

The Gulf of Mexico disaster has dominated American media but in mid-June 2010, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, David Michaels, spoke to the national conference of the American Society of Safety Engineers.  The full video of Michaels address is available online at http://vimeo.com/12591365 (Other safety associations should take note of this conference openness)

In his speech, Michaels talks about the poor application of safety incentives as well as a range of other related issues.

SafetyAtWorkBlog will include more reports on this conference later in the week.

Kevin Jones

Where’s the Sarbanes-Oxley for workplace safety?

In 2002, after several corporate collapses, the United States government signed in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act which was intended to establish business practices on accounting and auditing among other aims.  The Western world watched the introduction of this legislation and echoed many of the requirements in their own legislation and corporate oversight agencies.

It is likely in the wake of the global financial crisis that the United States (and Europe to a lesser extent) is entering another wave of corporate regulation or interference, depending on one’s politics.

These laws introduced substantial change to the management of businesses, the disclosure of information and the role of corporate executives.  When will this type of change include occupational safety and health?

Firstly, the United States’ safety professionals and regulators need to accept that their system of OHS legislation and enforcement is not “world’s best practice”.  There are major deficiencies in high-risk organisations and a misunderstanding of safety obligations at the shopfloor level.  These problems exist partly because of the structure and population of the country itself and also because there is so much baggage in its legal system that new perspectives in law are difficult to imagine.

A significant change in OHS law outside the United States is the issue of personal accountability for safety-related decisions.  There are few who complain about the jailing of CEOs and executives for the loss of money (their own and that of others) but there is a real barrier to jailing those same people when their management decisions led to a loss of life. Continue reading “Where’s the Sarbanes-Oxley for workplace safety?”

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